Remorse
by enigma939
Summary: Landy's thoughts about Bourne after she discovers the purpose of his visit to Moscow. One shot.


**Remorse**

**A/N: **This was a small one-shot I thought up after recently re-watching _The Bourne Supremacy_. It's from Landy's POV and explains the change in her attitude towards Bourne between the second and third films. There is also some mild foreshadowing for _The Bourne Ultimatum_ in this.

Pamela Landy stepped out of the car into the cold Moscow night and wordlessly made her way towards the hotel entrance. Her face was blank; devoid of expression and her movements were brisk and mechanical. She marched towards the reception, muttered her room number to the receptionist in a low monotone and swiftly took her room keys, and then moved towards the elevator.

Tom Cronin, Landy's long-time assistant and associate, could sense that something was bothering his superior, but he did not dare ask her about it. He knew that Pam, being the outspoken person that she was, would never remain silent about something unless it was something she knew or felt that she was certain she could not share with anybody else. Cronin respected her and her privacy enough therefore, to shy away from any inquisitiveness regarding her behavior.

Landy entered her room, threw of her coat, muffler and gloves, and then turned up the heater. Moscow in winter was certainly the stuff of chilling nightmares, she concluded silently in her mind, and the pun simply did not amuse her. And even less amusing things were occupying her mind at present. Facts, opinions, instincts all swam freely in her consciousness, waiting for her to impose order upon the chaos. Which she would, in due course of time. She _had _to. For her sake. For the sake of her beliefs, her ethics. For the sake of the Agency she'd served for most of her adult life. And, perhaps most importantly, for _his _sake as well.

Landy's opened the complementary bottle of vodka that had been sent up to her room and poured it out into a glass. Being the strict disciplinarian and taskmaster that she was, she never drank on duty, not if she could help it, but the events of the last few days, the startling revelations that had shaken the very orbit of her world, had left her both physically and emotionally drained and she needed the alcohol to regain her strengths.

It was after she'd taken a few sips of the vodka that she closed her eyes and started to think about what she'd heard just that very evening. Her mind flashed back to the apartment on the outskirts of Moscow and to the bewildered and frightened Russian girl barely out her teens. Irena Neski, daughter of the late Russian MP Vladimir Neski and his wife, who both died unfortunate deaths in a hotel room in Berlin years ago, amidst circumstances that were deeply mired in controversy and scandal. For years, the world had believed that Neski had been shot dead by his wife, before she turned her gun on herself. But Landy knew the truth now. And as she had discovered earlier than evening, so did Neski's daughter. She had discovered earlier that day, from none other than the man who _had _fired the shots that had killed both her parents.

Jason Bourne.

Landy could hardly believe it at first, but the girl had been adamant on that point. She saw the photographs they had flashed before her and identified Bourne positively as the wounded man who had broken into her apartment only to inform her of the truth behind her parent's death and to apologize for his part in it.

It had been sheer luck that Landy and her team, while retracing Bourne's steps in Moscow, came across the sweeper woman from whom Bourne had obtained the girl's address. Landy had wondered why Bourne would want to meet the daughter of his first target. And now that she knew, she could scarcely believe it…at first. But things were becoming clearer now…the pieces were falling into place….and Pamela Landy, Deputy Director of the CIA was starting to realize just how wrong she had been…and just how misunderstood was the man whom they had all been hunting.

The files had said that Bourne was a highly trained and lethal assassin. That was true enough. _They _said that he was a deranged sociopath who was out to destroy the Agency. _They _being Ward Abbott and those who were naïve enough to believe him. And _she_, who had often prided herself on her open-mindedness, had believed them as well. She had believed that Bourne was dangerous, that he was the enemy. She had even almost made up her mind to turn Bourne over to Abbott and his band of 'executioners' after she'd found out whatever she needed to from him. He was a cold-blooded killer, he was meant to be caught. Or killed. It was as simple as that…

But it _wasn't _as simple, as she had learnt. Jason Bourne was _not _the killer he was believed to be, because he had not killed when he had the chance. He did not kill Nicky. He did not kill Abbott. He did not kill her, for that matter. He did not even kill the assassin who killed his girlfriend. If he was a killer, it was because _they _had made him that way. The Agency. People like her. People she'd trusted and worked with for years, as colleagues and even as friends.

No. The real killers were lying, manipulative bastards like Abbott and Gretkov who stole and swiftly wiped all traces of their crime by eliminating all those who stood in their way without the slightest hesitation. Cold men for whom human lives were mere statistics, their loss to be labeled as mere 'collateral damage'. Men who sat behind desks and condemned innocents to death with phone calls, men who sat back while their pawns carried out the 'dirty work'. Men who remained 'clean' in the backdrop while people like Bourne took the blame.

She understood Bourne better now. She knew why he did what he did, and what motivated him. The rumors she'd heard about from Nicky were true; he _did _from amnesia. But what she now knew, which no one else had guessed, was that Bourne was a man haunted by the ghosts of a past he did not fully remember. He was a man who was overpowered by guilt for actions which he did not completely recall taking. It was why he had gone to the hotel room in Berlin to discover the truth. And it was why he then traveled all the way to Moscow in order to apologize to Neski's daughter. Because unlike Abbott, unlike Gretkov, unlike so many other corrupt and deceptive men like them; felt remorse.

He felt remorse even if he wasn't the one who planned the deaths of his victims. He felt remorse even though he was not a schemer, but merely a soldier; an automaton that was fed objectives and targets which translated into the deaths of innocent people he didn't even know. He felt remorse because _he _was the one who actually pulled the trigger, who actually saw the blood and brain tissue splatter across the floor, who witnessed the dying moments of his victims, while his handlers coldly and objectively stared at mere photographs days after the fact. Who reviewed the acts of violence sans the horror.

For the first time, Landy seriously began to wonder exactly what sort of psychological conditioning were the Treadstone operatives put through for them to coldly and efficiently carry out execution after execution, witness death after death, and still not be perturbed by the horror, still not be overwhelmed by remorse and guilt and break down completely. They would have had to have been like machines; cold and emotionless. It was certainly something she would have to look into, one day.

But then again, one of the machines had eventually broken down. Bourne had been overwhelmed by the repressed guilt, and had broken down completely, ceasing to remain the perfect 'killing machine' he'd been forged into and regaining his humanity in the process. For it was crystal clear to Landy now that a spark, no, _more _than just a spark of humanity and compassion remained within the man whom all had denounced as a cold-blooded killer. What had occurred that day in Moscow was testament to that. Bourne was more human than Abbott, than Gretkov, than Kirill…perhaps even more human than _her_.

Who knew?

And she realized now that she still wanted to find him. She wanted to meet him, to talk to him. There were so many things she wanted to say to him. She wanted to apologize to him, on behalf of the Agency, for all the trouble they had caused him…all the trouble _she _had caused him. She wanted to thank him for sending her the damning evidence against Abbott, for helping uncover treason in the higher-levels of the CIA. And most of all, she wanted to help him in his quest to learnt the truth behind his past. To help him discover how and why he became what he became. To find out who he had been before, the life he had led, where he was born, who his family was…the million little facts and tidbits about a person's life which almost everyone took for granted. But then, almost everyone had a memory. _She _had a memory. And she would never forget the mistakes she had made, the misconceptions she had been under.

She owed him one. She would certainly remember that. And when the time came, she would do her best to return the favor.


End file.
